


Clean

by Lilysmum



Category: The Killing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:26:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/pseuds/Lilysmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This takes place early on in S4 Ep 1.  After dealing with the body LInden and Holder go to get cleaned up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clean

Out of a string of shitty motels they picked the shittiest, the Hav-a-Nap, next door to the Americana.

 

Linden had been driving past it all her life.  The sign proclaiming ‘Yes, We Have Waterbeds!’ that all the teenagers used to snicker at was still there, she saw, but broken, detached now, leaning in the alleyway to the side of the building in a pile of discarded coffee cups, cigarette butts, dead leaves.

 

“Stay here,” Holder told her, “Don’t want anyone looking at you,” and she watched as he ducked inside, paid cash for the room and got the key from the defeated-looking old guy behind the counter. 

 

Holder held up the plastic key tag like a prize as he stepped back out.

 

“Lucky number seven, Baby, let’s go!” But his face was as dark as the sky, his body language all wrong, nothing matched, nothing was right.

 

She showered first, she’d somehow gotten muddier, bloodier, than he had.  The water wasn’t very hot to start with and it got cold fast. There was hardly any pressure in the groaning old pipes, either, but it did the job, washing the blood, the dirt, the filthy fucking horror down the rusty drain.  Mud and blood and grass, pieces of leaves and even a few small sticks had been plastered to her skin under her socks, and up under her sleeves.

 

Scrubbing all over, rubbing herself raw, she imagined it was everywhere, in her ears, under her nails, she even scrubbed out her mouth with soap under the showerhead.  Afterwards she just stood under the weak spray, freezing, not knowing what else to do, not knowing if she had gotten clean.

 

Her shaking had started by the time Holder smacked on the door.

 

“Hey, you okay?”  His voice brought her back.

 

“Yeah.”  She kills the water now, grabs a towel and wraps herself, shivering.

 

“You should wait,” she tells Holder as she steps back into the room on unsteady legs, “Water’s cold.”

 

“Nah,” Holder has already stripped down to his boxers, his clothes stuffed into the same trash bag that held hers. He drops his drawers now right in front of her, doesn’t care.  

 

“Somethin’ ‘bout bein’ in a cheap motel room with you Linden, just makes me need a cold shower.”

 

It’s not funny, it wasn’t even meant to be.  Just his reflexive banter, his brain on autopilot as he looks over his shoulder at her on his way into the bathroom.  But his face.  Oh god his face. He looks like how she feels. She is pretty damn sure neither one of them will ever laugh again.

 

He’s better when he comes out, the thin motel towel around him as he glances around the room for the bag with his extra clothes. 

 

But she’s not.

 

Linden’s curled up on her side on the bed, still wearing the towel, and she’s shaking, shaking so badly the bed is shaking with her.  Holder freezes when he notices, turns to stare at her, but she doesn’t see him, he may as well not be there at all.

 

There’s not much going through her head, really, just that it’s odd to be shaking like this, and not to be able to stop, or even to think about stopping. She has the feeling she may never stop. And the sobs that tear through her chest actually hurt, they strike so deep, and loud, she can’t believe all that noise is coming from her. She feels strangely detached, though, as if she is hovering above herself, looking down.

 

She remembers something like this happening to her before, years ago, when Jack was little.  Skinner had figured in that situation as well, she recalls.  She’d freaked out, not curled up in a fetal position, like now, but kneeling on her bathroom floor. She’d started slamming the door over and over again, she couldn’t stop until the wood split.  Jack, crying, covering his ears, a child, hadn’t known what to do.

 

But Holder does.

 

When saying her name has no effect, and shaking her shoulder does no better, he takes hold of her with both hands.

 

“Linden!”  She hears him, but she doesn’t think he’s really talking to her.  That’s not really her, on the bed, is it?  She wouldn’t behave like that.

 

Pushing her over onto her back, he pries her hands away from her face and takes both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them above her head.  A tendon or something pops in her shoulder and the pain actually feels good, is real, gets her attention. Holder uses his other hand to unlock her knees from her chest, forces her to lie flat, then holds her down with his knees, his legs. She’s panting, staring up at him, can’t believe what he is doing and his face is just as wild, his eyes black with fear and fury.

 

“Shut the fuck up Linden,” he hisses through his teeth, his mouth is right beside her ear, “Shut up right now. Do you want someone to hear you?”

 

But she struggles against him, her towel is gone and it does register that she is naked and so is he, now too, but she doesn’t care, why should she care.  They are in so much trouble, nothing matters.  There is nothing that could ever matter again.  She’s going to lose everything, and she’s dragged him in with her, he’ll go down just as bad.  And there’s Jack. He’ll be gone, he is already gone, but now he will be lost from her as well. This is the end of everything, of anything. How it is Holder doesn’t seem to know. Why is he looking at her like that, as if she’s not making sense?

 

“Don’t you get it?” she manages to spit out, barely able to breathe now, and shakes her head to make him move, he’s holding her down so tight. “We are in so much shit Holder.  We can’t get out of this, we can’t.  We’re done…it’s…does it even register with you what happened? You saw it! And we just made it ten times worse…”

 

The tears come and stop her voice.  It’s happening again, she will not be able to stop, she knows it. If she could just breathe enough, though, she could scream, she could scream with her whole body, with all her strength.  If she could fill her lungs properly, she thinks, she might be able to get some of it out of herself, this thing that has filled her. They can’t outrun it, it’s part of them now, they share it, it’s on them, in them.

 

And she’d known, even as she’d told him to go, to walk away, that there was never any choice for him to make, that he could never have left her alone with it.

 

She could explode if he would just get the fuck off of her. But he won’t.  He’s heavy and he’s strong and he will not let her move.

 

Holder raises his hand and Linden wonders for a second if he is going to slap her, like in the movies, shuts her eyes, tries to turn her head away.  But he doesn’t, he just takes her face in his hand and forces her to look at him.

 

“Look at me,” he tells her, quiet, scary, his mouth is only about an inch from hers, his thumb, his fingers, pressing on her jaw, “Do you need me to call an ambulance for you Linden? Is that what you need?”

 

She manages to focus on his eyes, for a second, sees the black, the gold, swirling in front of her own.  “You don’t want that, I know you don’t want that…” his voice is just a whisper, and she gets for a second the feeling that he will kiss her, to shut her up.

 

“You have to listen,” he says instead, “Breathe,” he tells her, leaves go of her face and gives her a nudge with his knee, and she does, she breathes in, out.

 

“You have to keep it together Linden.  You can’t go gettin’ crazy, or sick, or, or whatever the fuck, get it?”  Holder’s voice is failing him now, too, and he leans his forehead against hers, breathing into her face, and she feels a tremor run through his chest, he is shaking too. He releases his hold on her wrists, slides his hand down her arm.

 

“Listen to me,” he tells her, after a minute, “We’re fine, Linden. It’s going. To be. Fine.”

 

She manages to nod, once. “Okay,” she is able to say, still trying to breathe.  She lets the fight drain out of her.  There is no point in trying to make him understand.  She feels her muscles unclenching one by one, her body softening, sinking.  He is not really holding her down anymore, just leaning his weight on top of her, pressing her into the bed.  For the first time she takes in his body, his skin, the tatts, black ink, and he’s so white, whiter even than she is.  She can feel the hair on his legs is soft.  And he’s hard, more or less, pressing against her side, and she’s looking. What’s happening? Is this real?  This the first time he has ever touched her skin.

 

“Okay you’re gettin’ up,” he’s telling her and she feels him shifting away from her, still on her but moving to the side, “Put your stuff on. We’re gonna stay here for a bit, then we’ll leave, we’ll get some food, and we’re going in, start our shift, okay? You can show up first. It’s just any other day, Linden.” He rattles off the instructions, seemingly ignoring everything else.  His face is even closer to her now, leaning on his elbows, and his body is against hers still.  Despite the cold water in the shower his skin is warm.

 

“Okay,” she hears herself say, and feels like, yes, she could do that, she could go through the motions. 

 

Holder doesn’t move though, he just lies still, looking steadily into her eyes through wet strings of her own hair, looking as though trying to see what’s inside of her. 

 

God, Holder, she tells him silently, you already know, you’ve seen it all now. His eyes are like dark water, pools she could slide into and stay under, and not drown, somehow still breathe. She shifts a little under him to rub her hip up against his cock and that rouses him, he pushes her hair aside, moving in slow motion.  She doesn’t even remember sliding her arms around his back, but there they are.

 

“We’re good.” He says so quietly she barely hears. 

“I know,” she tells him, and she knows that he won’t do it now so she reaches up, pulls him down the short distance to meet her mouth, kisses him, runs her tongue over the sharp edge of his teeth, and for a minute he responds, before she feels him pull away.

 

“You don’t want to,” he tells her and she can’t believe it, why would he think that?  She is the one that kissed him, she is the one that is holding on now.

 

“What?” she asks him, trying to catch the breath that is again eluding her. There is nothing else on earth that she wants.

 

“You didn’t want to,” Holder says, his eyes downcast for a second, then back up to meet hers, “Before.”

 

Was it really only two, three days ago? She’d thought at the time, that it was the most horrible night, the worst.  Little had she known.

 

She pushes away a spark of anger, that he is arguing, when he wants it, she knows.  She shakes her head in frustration with him now because why are they still even talking, and how is she supposed to come up with reasons for things now when there is no reason left for anything, when everything is gone. Is he actually going to make her try to explain herself?  Does she have to spell it out for him that until right fucking now she had thought that there was going to be something else for Stephen Holder in this life?  That what she’d wanted for him was not some heartbroken drunk fuck in his smoke filled apartment because she was the only one who could deal with him, or to be screwing his female cop partner in a shitty motel because, guess what, there really is nothing else left for them now.

 

“You don’t know what I wanted,” she tells him, finally.  She lifts a hand, strokes his cheek with the back of her fingers and he bows his head, breathes.

 

It doesn’t matter that he is kissing her like a kid, without finesse, as if he is tasting something he never thought he’d get, that he is afraid will be yanked away from them at any second. She doesn’t notice that the light is too bright or that they haven’t pulled the curtains.  The thirst and the ache that she feels in him match her own, it’s feral, rinsing through her body like water.  When she feels him slide his leg up between hers she clamps down on it, arches her back, rubs against him.  He pushes back, flexes his thigh muscle, and it’s almost enough, it could almost be enough, just like that. 

 

She grabs his hand and slides it between herself and his leg, takes his fingers and dips them. She crushes her legs around him and then it’s coming out of nowhere, there is no way out.

 

“Jesus,” he breathes into her ear, he knows, he can tell, “Hold on a sec,” he says but she just manages to tell him, that she can’t, she can’t wait, and then she is coming against his hand with an intensity that frightens her.  It’s over so fast she wonders if it even happened at all, a flash, almost, a lightning strike, in her brain more than anywhere else.

 

When she opens her eyes he is staring at her, looking at her like he’s just seen something amazing.  He doesn’t say it but she knows what he’s thinking. Holy shit, Linden.

 

He’s heavy and solid in her hands, damp and hot.  She turns over onto her other side, puts her back to him, presses herself up against him.  With her top leg hooked around she reaches back between and helps him slip in from behind.

 

“Linden I can do way better than this,” he tells her but tries a couple of experimental strokes, anyway, rubs his face against the side of her head.

 

“Yeah me too… who cares,” she answers as he slides his hand down the front of her, to see if she wants anything else, and she does.

 

But he’s being tentative, too gentle, he’s alternating between trying to kiss her and trying to see what he is doing. She gets the feeling that he thinks he has to make it take forever but she’s impatient, she needs intensity. He doesn’t need to take it easy, he doesn’t need to multi-task.  Later, she thinks, if he wants, but for now, she tells him he can go to town, that she won’t break, and so he does, more or less. He’s quiet, for a change, she notices, he’s serious and purposeful, settled, holding onto her really tight, and so after a time she asks him how it is. 

 

“So fucking good, Linden,” he tells her, and he stops trying to watch and buries his face in her hair, “So good…so good…”  He keeps saying it, over and over again, like a mantra, so good, so good, so good…until eventually it is not words anymore, just sounds, his, hers, on and on.

 

And he’s right, it’s perfect, it’s what she needs. He may as well be fucking her everywhere, all the way up through her core, right up into her brain, pushing out everything else, getting rid of it all, and it’s just him, it’s just Holder, there is nothing left inside her and there is nobody else left in the world. That’s what finally pushes her over the edge at last, she thinks, more than his dick or his fingers or his mouth on her neck,  it’s just that its _him,_ and that he’s hers, those are his legs behind hers, and that’s his hand squeezing her shoulder from the back to let her know. She hears her name on his lips, along with God’s, and Jesus’s, and possibly something else but she is lost in it too, then, coming forever, it seems, falling and falling, she barely makes a sound.

 

She’s in the bathroom cleaning up.  Holder steps in, looks her over.

 

“I wasn’t thinking, sorry,” he tells her.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” she shrugs it off, she has to go to the pharmacy anyway, what’s the difference.

 

Holder nods, gets it.  He steps up behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders. She watches his face in the mirror. He slides his eyes all over her.

 

“Did I hurt your arms?” he asks.  She shakes her head, no, shrugs.  Well, not much.

 

If it was anybody else she would be ashamed. But not now.  Not with him.  She doesn’t know why Reddick suddenly pops into her head.  God.  She can imagine exactly what he would say if he knew.  He’d been a problem already and she had a feeling he would become even more of one now, sniffing around like some old dog, with his ever-present Holder preoccupation.

 

Yeah that’s right Carl, she thinks, I sleep with everybody.  Everybody but you that is.

 

She can feel Holder behind her again.  She knows he hasn’t had enough. Good. This is their chance, she knows, it’s doubtful they will ever be back here again.

 

“You’re okay,” he tells her, and it’s a statement, not a question.  They both look in the mirror together, stare for a minute at each other, at themselves.  It’s kind of amazing, she thinks, that this has never happened until now. That it took the end of the world, pretty much, to put them here.

 

She’s suspected for some time how it is with him, about her.  But she never knew it was possible that there would actually be a person who would just…refuse, to walk away, who would stay, no matter what.

 

“You’re strong Linden,” he says, touches his face to the top of her head, “You’re good.”  He squeezes her shoulders hard, holds them  for a second, then slides his hands down her arms. A ripple of something flows through her, what it is, she is not sure. But it’s good. It’s something shared.

 

She nods.  She is.  “Yeah,” she tells him, then asks, “What about you?  You okay?” She turns to look at him.

 

Holder lets go of her, steps back into the bedroom, she hears his laugh and the aged bed’s protest as he flops down.

 

“Fuck yeah.” He says, sounding like himself now, “’Ceptin’ for the fact that you almost broke my damn leg, that is…you gonna come back in here or what?”

 

Linden stares at the face in the mirror.  It’s still her face.  It’s the face of a killer. But she’s seen the face of evil, looked into its eyes.  This is not it.

 

She’s pale, she’s never seen her freckles stand out so darkly against her skin before. Her eyes are bloodshot, sore from salt tears. Her hair is still half wet and it’s all over the place.

 

But she looks okay.  She doesn’t look like she’s about to go crazy.  And she looks clean.

 

This, at least, is something.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Again glowcult with the beautiful and invaluable beta, thank you, so much.


End file.
